


what you know won't kill you

by alsahm



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi Goro Lives, Coping, F/M, Family, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sibling Theory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 22:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18837778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alsahm/pseuds/alsahm
Summary: Sae slides the envelope to Sojiro, who eyes her wearily until she prods, "yes, for you." Then he tears it open and stares until Ren plucks it out of his hands, which, newly freed, smack Ren upside the head.Too late, though, because knowledge is a virus, and Ren read enough.(Well, Leader? Lead.)





	what you know won't kill you

**Author's Note:**

> for real this time!

What Sae found is this: Akechi has a brother. Two, potentially, but it could just be the same one under a different name. Older than him, well-adjusted, never-the-wiser, with a wife and child of his own neatly tucked away in Kyoto, and, Ren, "we trust you not to tell him this."

He hates adults but for their benefit he nods.

"Also," Sae says, "there's this," and she slides the remaining envelope not to Ren but to Sojiro, who eyes her wearily ere she prods, "yes, for _you_ ," and then he tears it open and stares uncomprehendingly, until Ren plucks it out of his hands, which, newly freed, smack Ren upside the head. 

Too late, though, because knowledge is a virus, and Ren read enough.

Futaba, apparently, has a brother. Three, potentially.

* * *

Sumie is texting Ren and is given the respect darling Neesan is due: he doesn't leave his elder sister on read, because he doesn't read her. Instead he swipes left and taps Hide, and since she is so much smarter than him she really should get the message. He bothers to wonder if he's being a dick only when Morgana hops into his lap to probe, "You've got that look on your face! Who is it?"

There's no point denying his mood around Morgana, so Ren just sets his phone screen-down and collapses similarly on the futon, one hand stretched to beckon forth his magician. Morgana tucks into the affection. 

He wonders if this would suck so much if they weren't related by blood. The thought is poison but Ren's developed so unhealthy an appetite for danger that he indulges it: if Sumie didn't look like him, if they didn't have the same eyes and cadence and gait, maybe he would never have loved past her screeching, god-awful Korean singing, maybe one mechanical pencil's eraser would have been too far, maybe he wouldn't give a damn that she stares at him like he's a question. He doesn't care, he told Ann, he really _doesn't_ , when Morgana made sure, but he has become so practiced a liar even to himself.

He scarcely knows how to be around Yuri anymore. He left behind a bob cut with the squishiest cheeks, arrived a year later to scarlet ribbons in princess curls, a top-hatted charm on her new phone. It threatens to steal his heart.

She doesn't even _know_. Sumie is forbidden from telling her. Of course, so is he.

They are all so afraid of their enigma.

Yet love must be all time and habits and shared borders, because it waits not for consent. Despite the argument Sumie is still _Sumie_ and Yuri is _Yuri_ and they are ever his. Much the same by the end of last year Futaba could finish his sentences and he hers; she is one of his but isn't Sumie's or Yuri's or that _monster_ 's, because it has nothing to do with DNA, especially not the rotten DNA in question.

Ren hauls Morgana to his other side and repositions himself face up, snatching at his phone just to slide the camera's privacy-cover in and out of place. The click is as satisfying as the smooth plastic under his thumb, and he thinks about Futaba and her resolve to remove the spyware from his device once she understood this gift's purpose. Thinks of the one who had the mind to present it to him, silently spurning her so to do.

She was so upset then. At Ren and at herself. "Why didn't you say anything," she muttered into her curry, soul retreating so easily, and _that_ was why. _Is_ why, again, that he cannot tell Futaba this secret: because she is so small it would consume her whole, and look at how far she's come toward happiness.

 _But_ , the just part of him, the angry part of him, always waiting, bated Joker, reminds him, _she has a right to know._

Knowledge is a virus with no vaccine.

 _But she has a right to_ know _._

About that vile piece of shit, and how the next time she needs a medical history, she can point to his narcissistic, ugly head, and detail that mental illness is clearly a recurring theme in this generation of his progeny, of her—her kin? 

Not family. Never family. Sojiro is her family. _Ren_ is her family.

And Akechi? What of his right to know?

 _"We trust you not to tell him this_."

Now Ren's thumb hovers over the contact, a message drafting and redrafting itself in his head. Somehow tapping on the name at all, even if to scroll through their message history, feels like sending a read receipt. The same sort of pinch in his gut as when he’d hear Caroline or Justine in his head, _This person needs you and you need them,_ only now laced with the danger of mutual awareness.

Even thinking about Akechi Goro makes Ren deplorable. It's no longer a guilty pleasure but a hollowness, because he is now responsible for his every breath when it could have been so much easier for everyone involved—a tidy little bow on an issue no longer needing an address—even if only Akechi himself has the gall to so say.

_You should have let me die._

Love is what kills Ren over and over and over again.

* * *

Hifumi loves to flirt with old books. In Jimbocho she tips her nose into the hearts of open tomes and inhales the dust, teetering on her feet, hands clasped behind her back. Her smiles are pretty and private, the books her old friends, their aroma conjuring memories from a time before emotional nuance. She has mentioned with affection her father’s library, how eloquent he was a reader. 

When she catches Ren staring at moments like these she’ll bite her bottom lip to suppress the sheepish grin, and he'll think about how he can’t fathom life without her. 

Her ribbon drives him craziest. It takes his entire reservoir of self-restraint not to play with it in public, and still sometimes he'll fail to hold back if their shoulders touch. Presently he twists strands of his own hair between his fingers; impatient, contemplative, sleep-deprived.

“I’m sorry I always drag you here,” she says, weighing two books of the same title in either hand. One has gilded edges but the other a worn leather cover, and her father would love both. “I know it's not the most ideal date spot…"

Ren has spent most of his time in Tokyo willfully bowing to his friends' whims. His personal fancies will probably give him early heart disease and, perhaps more significantly, landed him in jail. Twice. More if you count the one in his head. 

So “I like books," he reminds her, stuffing his hands in his pockets, shoulders squared, back straight. It makes him feel more present. "I spent most of that winter reading books."

He never knows he's going to bring up that winter before he does it. It's something he should work on—to avoid the awkward pauses in conversation, drinks set down mid-slurp and laughs frozen on his friends' faces—but at least it's better, Morgana insisted, than acting as though it never happened. Still, Ren feels guilty.

At least Hifumi doesn't frown or purse her lips, only taps a thoughtful finger to them. She doesn't look at him, either, when she tries, "Tell me about them over dinner?" A sideways glance. "Joker."

It churns inside him, this feeling, at once unnerving and not unpleasant. 

He swallows it to say, "Yeah."

A smirk ghosts her lips. Lacing her smallest finger in his, she leads them to the check-out.

* * *

> **futaba:** MONA'S MINE TONIGHT KTHX  
>  **ren:** sure. i'll be back late.

* * *

Sumie has curled her hair, just on the border of stylish and homely. She's wearing a blazer he doesn't recognize and the necklace Mom wore to court, and has Ren entered some new parallel dimension _what the hell is she doing in Tokyo_.

"Good… morning," he says, and blinks at Sojiro in hopes of an answer. He gets only a shrug and two once-overs at yesterday's clothes.

"Mom said you found a new place," she says, frowning.

Mom said you found a new job, he thinks, smiling.

His sister was going to be a teacher, before, because that's what good suburban girls do before their little brothers rock the boat by (not) assaulting someone, accidentally growing a crush on that someone's homicidal bastard, and then going to juvie because carrying out mystical vigilante justice is "morally ambiguous" and "illegal." 

Now she is single and trying for a managerial track. 

Or so he's heard. A suitcase stands beside her, handlebar up. 

Point of fact: Ren _does_ have a new place. It's just that his family thinks it's his old place; as a high schooler he'd assumed his parents knew about the attic, and only realized otherwise when it was too late for him to clarify. By then, Sojiro and Futaba were too dear to betray, and now that he pays his own rent for the extra room in their home proper, it _is_ technically new to him, even if his mailing address has not changed. 

It's not something with which he cares to burden his sister, though, so he says, as if she is a customer and he is behind the counter, "Sorry. It seems there's been a misunderstanding."

At Ren's uncharacteristic restraint Sojiro furrows his brow, but clever half-truths travel both directions, and Ren does his best to take calls from his family away from listening ears. Sumie, too, while grown used to Ren's distance, noticeably grits her teeth, guarding her irritation in polite company. Their bad attitudes are a family curse, and some are historically better at suppressing it. 

Others are Ren.

Swinging off his bag he retrieves his work apron, carefully ties it in place. Even if he's not due for a shift it'll help if he occupies his hands, gives his mind something on which to focus. Sojiro is busy preparing himself a cup, but the counter could use some wiping, the dishes are sitting so expectant. 

Safely on the clock Ren says, "Neesan," and it's still unfamiliar enough to her that she flinches. "Couldn't you have told me you were coming for a visit?"

For another moment she's ready to snap at him, unsure if he's earnest or scathing, but then she rolls her eyes. "I _did_. Seriously, Ren, what's the point of having a phone if you don't read your texts?"

He laughs something pleasant, a trick he perfected from watching his ex. "You sound like Mom."

"I mean it." Her eyes are trailed on his bag, brow fixed in confusion. "Where's your cat…? You bring that thing everywhere with you."

Sojiro clears his throat, then, and places his cup on the counter with a soft _clink_. "Cat's at home. My daughter's taking care of him." He nudges the drink forward with his knuckles. "On the house."

Sumie's gaze cycles between the three—the cup, Sojiro, Ren—but she settles at the bar, inhaling the warmth of it. Ren realizes he doesn't know if his sister is one for snooty coffee—all their father likes is tea and their mother never shops for further caffeine, and whenever they came upon a vending machine together, Sumie would suggest they go for two of the weirdest concoctions available and share.

He forgot about that. Forgot, too, that Yuri only ever bought melon soda. It belongs to a set of lonely memories he surrendered to Tokyo, buried in a box of junk, covered with Yusuke's delicate palate and Futaba's urgent collecting.

Sojiro bumps Ren's shoulder, gestures to a second cup. "Sit," is his suggestion, and Ren nods but doesn't so do, instead arcing over the counter two seats over from his sister. The steam from the Brazilian fogs his glasses when he goes for a sip and he feels her staring, which is awful because typically his glasses make him feel more confident or hidden or Joker than Ren; with her they just make him feel weak and stupid and like he's still in yesterday's clothes, especially now that she was right about karma and how he would end up needing them.

Sojiro has melded with the scenery. 

Sumie sets her cup down purposefully to ask, "How's yours?" 

That's bait he won't take.

Sumie sighs and it chills him that he recognizes the rhythm of it, remembers suddenly the beat of Yuri's snicker and the aunt that made him finally forgive his younger sister for not being a brother, _Doesn't Yuri have Ren-nii's laugh?_ And as he watches Sumie's shoulders collapse into themselves like he often watched his father's, Ren is newly bewildered about how much of him lives in other people, how they are all so sure that they love each other, but until he left their good graces or it was pointed out to him by someone else, this was all stuff he barely noticed.

Maybe that's how it works. Maybe what keeps families together is only self-absorption, the unconscious recognition that people look and act and breathe like you, in the same way that it was their shared spirits that linked the Phantom Thieves. 

Maybe that's what's wrong with him. They poisoned his eyes and bruised his lungs and kicked his legs out and the mirror he once was is cracked, and through its chasm Joker claws for more, more, more, strive for justice again, try and kill me again, and either Ren or the other side should finish their fucking job this time.

Sumie says something about an interview and the city and how she tried to contact him, and Ren why did you say no when Sakura-san offered to help you look for a real place?

"It is a real place," Ren says, because "it has walls and a door and everything," and as his sister gets annoyed and lashes out he declares that he has an appointment and if he could please be excused, and he shakes his head at Sojiro and tosses the apron and leaves.

* * *

> **ren:** home  
>  **ren:** mom ok now?  
>  **hifumi:** We're working on it  
>  **hifumi:** You?  
>  **ren:** working on it  
>  **hifumi:** Tell me about it?
> 
> **ren is typing...**
> 
> **hifumi is typing...**
> 
> **hifumi:** Joker.  
>  **ren:** yeah ok

**Author's Note:**

> (shaking) if you liked this, please leave a comment! you can also [rt](https://twitter.com/lumenize/status/1128676384442855424) on twitter ♡


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